1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of generating trunk group translations for new telephone services. More specifically, the present invention relates to the field of interfacing between an translations input system and a trunk inventory system.
2. Background of the Invention
Telephone companies must assign trunks and facilities to support new services, such as a new trunk-terminated service for a telephone service subscriber or a new telephone company trunk group. The process of assigning the trunks and facilities, known as xe2x80x9ccircuit provisioning,xe2x80x9d is performed by establishing new trunk groups and trunks in the telephone company""s network over which the service is implemented. During circuit provisioning, translations for the switch are entered into the software of the central office switch by a switch technician.
Translations consist of information that is input in a switch to operate correctly to provide new service including, for example, trunk group number, group type, direction, trunk selection, glare control, and type of pulsing. Essentially, the translations are software data elements that xe2x80x9ctranslatexe2x80x9d human service requirements into logic the switching machine can recognize and use. The translations include trunk group level data and trunk level data. Trunk level data relates to the individual port assignments of the switch for which the circuit provisioning is being performed. Trunk group data defines the characteristics for each of the trunks being provisioned. Additional information required for routing and screening is obtained from other sources.
Translation information is vendor specific and can differ depending on the type of trunk group being translated within a particular environment. In the prior art, when a new trunk group was ordered, the provisioning specialist would have to work his way through the switch vendor""s translation guides to determine data values that would ultimately be used to manually populate translation screens in a trunk inventory system.
The translations guides are complex documents published by the telephone network vendors, e.g., the Lucent 5ESS Translation Guide and the Nortel Practice 297-8021-350 guide, both of which are incorporated by reference in their entireties herein. The translation guides contain numerous volumes of documentation the provisioning specialist needs to provision new trunk groups. Using the translation guides, along with his experience, the provisioning specialist attempts to determine the fields that needed to be populated to translate the type trunk group being translated, and fill in the values for those fields. From this input, a document would be generated having the fields and their values. This document was issued to the switch technician who entered the data in the switch.
As might be expected, this process for providing trunk group translations resulted in many errors. For example, the provisioning specialist might choose an inaccurate value for a field because of the complexity of the translation guides. In addition, the provisioning specialist could enter the data incorrectly into the trunk inventory system.
To assist the provisioning specialist in determining the correct information for a new trunk group, a system was developed that organized the data from the translation guides into logic tables. This system is a translation input system. One such translation input system is the NeTTS system operated by BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. of Atlanta, Ga. The provisioning specialist interacts with the translations input system to input trunk group level data and trunk group data. As described above, this data includes of trunk group serial number, trunk group number, direction, pulsing, start dials, traffic use code/service code, circuit order number, and due date. For customer-ordered trunk groups, the translation input system might query the provisioning specialist to assist the provisioning specialist in generating the translation for the trunk group being translated. The NeTTS system made the process of input translations data faster and more accurate.
NeTTS generates a file containing switch specific data fields and data values required for the trunk group translation. The information contained in the file is entered into a trunk inventory system using one or more switch-specific views. The provisioning specialist determines the correct switch-specific view to use with the aide of a job aide. Each view is a switch-specific screen presented to the provisioning specialist that contains the fields that have to be populated for a particular trunk group translation for a particular switch. One example of a system providing such views is the Generic Trunk Administration System (GTAS) executing on the trunk inventory record keeping system (TIRKS) at BellSouth in Atlanta, Ga. TIRKS is an exemplary trunk inventory system that was developed by Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies). It is a database that contains information related to trunk groups, equipment, and facilities in the telephone network.
The provisioning specialist updates the relevant views to create the trunk group translation. This is a slow, laborious process that not only requires additional manpower, but is also prone to human error. The trunk inventory system outputs a document to a switch technician that contains the trunk group level translations and trunk level translations that the switch needs to create a new trunk group.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a prior art system having a manual interface between NeTTS and TIRKS. Referring to FIG. 1, a system 102 has a circuit provisioning group (xe2x80x9cCPGxe2x80x9d) 104 in which there is a provisioning specialist. The provisioning specialist receives a request or work order to provide trunk group and trunk group level translations. The provisioning specialist interfaces with a translation input system 106, such as NeTTS (described above), enters trunk group translation data into translation input system 106 by populating an input screen and answering questions, if necessary. Translations input system 106 uses the data provided by the provisioning specialist and logic tables administered by the local telephone company to generate a file containing trunk group translation data, which the provisioning specialist prints out as a document.
Using a switch specific view job aid, the provisioning specialist determines the trunk group view name and trunk view name to be used for the trunk group being translated. The provisioning specialist logs into trunk inventory system 108 and traverses through the various views to create the required trunk group translation.
For example, using the GTAS system described above, the provisioning specialist populates a TAS administrative screen with the view names from the job aid. The provisioning specialist then updates a TAS trunk group number screen with the trunk group number, start member number and end trunk number. Then, using the document printed from translation input system 106, the provisioning specialist populates the trunk group and trunk group level translation data on the TASASG hard-coded screen using the printout from NeTTS.
An exemplary conventional two-page GTAS view is illustrated in FIGS. 2A (page 1) and 2B (page 2). As shown, the view has a number of hard-coded fields distributed throughout the document. The specific field names and functions are well-known to those skilled in the art and described in the various the switch vendor translations guides referenced above. There are different view names depending on switch type and type of group being translated.
As can be seen, the view illustrated in FIGS. 2A and 2B has a hard-coded or specific structured format. The provisioning specialist inputs data in the various fields provided in the view. Every field in the particular view is present, whether the field is populated or not.
Local telephone companies have the ability to design customized trunk group and trunk level translation views that are based on switch type and group types. Consequently, there are hundreds of views for typical telephone company trunk groups. In addition, the views are hard-coded, i.e., the views have a very specific structure that cannot be easily modified. That is, every field, whether populated or not for the view is displayed on the screen, and at specific points in the screen. This holds true for the paper document that is generated as the output of the trunk inventory system that is ultimately provided to the switch technician to enter the trunk group translation. Thus, any interface contemplated between translation input system 106 and trunk inventory system 108 using conventional views would have to be able to handle the hundreds of switch-specific views that exist, as well as be able to adapt with changing views. Such an interface would be an enormously difficult undertaking, not only due to the large number of switch-specific views, but also in providing a system for easily modifying and incorporating modified views.
The present invention solves the problems associated with conventional translation generation systems by providing a direct interface between a translation input system, such as NeTTS, and a trunk inventory system such as TIRKS. Thus, the present invention sets up a link between the mechanized trunk group translation output system and the input trunk inventory system. Using the present invention, a provisioning specialist translates a new trunk group using a translation input system. The translation input system generates a file including a header section, a trunk group section, and a trunk level section. The header section includes the trunk group number, trunk and group view names, start trunk number, start member number, and end trunk number. The trunk group and trunk level sections include the switch-specific translations data required for the trunk group being translated.
Using an approved file transfer protocol, the file is sent to an input translation file directory residing on a server. The input translation file directories is scanned periodically to determine if any new translation files have been added. When a new file is found, it is processed by a terminal emulation program such as TASKMATE. The terminal emulation program logs into the trunk inventory system and, using the new file received from the translation input system, performs all trunk group and trunk group level updates to generate the trunk group translation.
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the trunk group and trunk level updates are performed using xe2x80x9cgenericxe2x80x9d views provided on the trunk inventory system. Thus, the file output by the NeTTS system is reformatted into a generic view. This reformatting is preferably done by a terminal emulation program such as the well-known TASKMATE terminal emulator.
Generic views are free-formatted views. That is, generic views do not have the rigid structure of conventional views. For example, in the preferred embodiment, the generic views have only a header and space to place the trunk group level translation data. Free-formatted views simplify creating the interface between the translation input system and the trunk inventory system by eliminating the need to design software for each switch-specific view. Moreover, using the free-formatted views of the present invention eliminates the need to continuously update the terminal emulation program when changes are made to views because the only software needs only to handle a generic view, as opposed to a switch-specific view. The generic views allow terminal emulation software to use the file output by the translation input system to populate the table name, translation fields, and field values on blank lines, without requiring adherence to any rigid structure.
Thus, one object of the present invention is to provide an interface between a translation input system, such as NeTTS, and a trunk inventory system, such as TIRKS, using an approved file transfer protocol and a terminal emulation program such as TASKMATE.
Another object of the present invention is to provide generic views for use in generating trunk group translations.
Another object of the present invention is to improve the accuracy of entering translation information into a trunk inventory system.
Another object of the present invention is to improve the efficiency of entering trunk group translation information into a trunk inventory system.
Another object of the present invention is to improve the speed of entering trunk group translation information into a trunk inventory system.
Another object of the present invention is to avoid synchronization problems that can arise if structured views change before the terminal emulation program can be updated to handle the new view.